EU adds more muddle to the Med

A communication that is candid on details, but troublingly artful in its messages.

European Voice

5/21/08, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 1/22/16, 1:13 PM CET

The Commission’s communication on boosting EU links with the Mediterranean carries some clear messages – but not all of them reflect well on the EU. In its content, the Commission plan, published on 20 May, has much to recommend it. This is a candid appraisal of where attempts so far have failed. The persistent Middle East conflict has made it difficult to preserve dialogue with all regional partners, it concedes. Progress in strengthening governance and democracy in the region has been limited. Investment, growth and reform have fallen short of expectations.

Many of the Commission’s recommendations are realistic responses to its analysis. It highlights the need to generate a sense of involvement from partner countries – conspicuous by its absence from current efforts – and urges new joint structures to promote co-ownership. And it focuses on practical projects with a regional and trans-national dimension, to reinforce participation.

It is when the plan is viewed in its context that some of the less attractive aspects are revealed.

The genesis of this communication was itself troubled. When newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy made his proposal for a Mediterranean Union – even with a date for an inaugural summit – some member states saw it as a naked bid to subvert EU processes (and the upcoming French presidency of the Council of Ministers) in pursuit of specifically French objectives – combating illegal immigration, strengthening energy ties, countering Islamist extremism and re-asserting French authority over a former zone of influence. That is why Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and other critics ensured that the concept was diluted at the March European Council and subsumed into the existing Barcelona Process, with a carefully worded instruction to the Commission to produce some minimal content for the sanitised project.

The communication is, in consequence, a deliberately muted programme. It is unedifying to see the EU institutions reduced to operating in this fashion. It shows how when an unwelcome proposal from a member state cannot be entirely rejected because of the member state’s power, other member states instead conspire with the Commission to emasculate or sabotage it – to “damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer”.

Equally troubling are the messages that the plan sends to the partner countries. Their patience has been tried over the last few years while the EU asks them to take seriously first the Barcelona Process, then the European Neighbourhood Policy and now the revamped Barcelona Process: Union for the Mediterranean.

The plan shows deep ignorance too, treating them as if geography implied similarity. The ambitions of, say, Morocco and Egypt are widely different in terms of closer association with the EU. The communication politely acknowledges the challenge that “the complex regional environment” will present to agreeing a co-president to represent it, but has not dared to contemplate just how much of a challenge that might be. What would happen if Israel were to bid for the role, or if a hostile co-presidency decided to exclude Israel from the biannual summit that each co-president will host?

Even the concept of the Mediterranean region is largely a European construct: the countries of its southern and eastern coasts have predominantly African or Arab affiliations and identities (the Maghreb looks more to the Gulf states than to the EU for partnership – and investment).

But perhaps the most undignified aspect of the communication is the confirmation it offers of a shift in EU ambitions. Despite its claims to seek an upgrading of political relations, the communication is noticeably short on strengthening democracy, promoting human rights or protecting minorities. Conditionality has been put in the backseat in this new relationship. Instead it is strong on seeking economic reform and serving an EU agenda increasingly dominated by concerns over stemming the flow of illegal immigration and speeding the flow of energy and gas.